Question 6

Why has sex been a taboo in all the societies down the ages?

 

 

It is a very complicated question, but very important too -- worth going into.

 

Sex is the most powerful instinct in man. The politician and the priest have understood from the very beginning that sex is the most driving energy in man. It has to be curtailed, it has to be cut. If man is allowed total freedom in sex, then there will be no possibility to dominate him: to make a slave out of him will be impossible.

 

Have you not seen it being done'? When you want a bull to be yoked to a bullock-cart, what do you do? You castrate him: you destroy his sex energy. And have you seen the difference between a bull and an ox? What a difference! An ox is a poor phenomenon, a slave. A bull is a beauty; a bull is a glorious phenomenon, a great splendour. See a bull walking! How he walks like an emperor! And see an ox pulling a bullock-cart.

 

The same has been done to man: the sex instinct has been curtailed, cut, crippled.

 

Man does not exist as the bull now, he exists like the ox. And each man is pulling a thousand and one bullock-carts. Look, and you will find behind you a thousand and one bullock-carts, and you are yoked to them. Why can't you yoke a bull? The bull is too powerful. If he sees a cow passing by, he will throw both you and the bullock-cart, and he will move to the cow. He will not bother a bit about who you are, and he will not listen. It will be impossible to control the bull.

 

Sex energy is life energy; it is uncontrollable. And the politician and the priest are not interested in you, they are interested in channelising your energy into certain other directions. So there is a certain mechanism behind it -- it has to be understood.

 

Sex repression, tabooing sex, is the very foundation of human slavery. And man cannot be free unless sex is free. Man cannot be REALLY free unless his sex energy is allowed natural growth.

 

These are the five tricks through which man has been turned into a slave. into an ugly phenomenon, a cripple.

 

The first is: Keep man as weak as possible if you want to dominate him. If The priest wants to dominate you or the politician wants to dominate you, you have to be kept as weak as possible. Yes, in certain cases, exceptions are allowed that is, when the services of fighting our enemy are needed, only then otherwise not. The army is allowed many things which other people are not allowed. The army is in the service of death; it is allowed to be powerful. It is allowed to remain as powerful as possible: it is needed to kill the enemy.

 

Other people are destroyed. They are forced to remain weak in a thousand and one ways. And the best way to keep a man weak is not to give love total freedom. Love is nourishment. Now the psychologists have discovered it: that if a child is not given love, he shrivels up into himself and becomes weak. You can give him milk, you can give him medicine, you can give him everything just don't give love. don't hug him. doll ( kiss him. don't hold him close to the warmth of your body, and the child will start becoming weaker and weaker and weaker. And there are more chances of dying than surviving.

 

What happens? Why? Just hugging, kissing, giving warmth, somehow the child feels nourished, accepted, loved, needed. The child starts feeling worthy; the child starts feeling a certain meaning in his life.

 

Now, from the very childhood, we starve them: we don't give love as much as is needed. Then we force the young men and young women not to fall in love unless they get married. By the age of fourteen, they become sexually mature. But the education may take more time -- ten years more, twenty-four, twenty-five years -- then they will be getting their M.A.'s, or Ph.D.'s, or M.D.'s so we have to force them not to love.

 

Sexual energy comes to its climax near about the age of eighteen. Never again will a man be so potent, and never again will a woman be able to have a greater orgasm than she will be able to near the age of eighteen. But we force them not to make love. We force boys to have their separate dormitories. Girls and boys are kept separate -- and just between the two stands the whole mechanism of police, magistrates, vice-chancellors, principals, head masters. They are all standing there, just in between, just holding the boys back from moving to the girls, holding the girls back from moving to the boys. Why? Why is so much care taken'? They are trying to kill the bull and create an ox.

 

By the time you are eighteen you are at the peak of your sexual energy, your love energy. By the time you get married twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven... and the age has been going up and up. The more cultured a country, the more you wait, because more has to be learnt, the job has to be found -- this and that. By the time you get married you are almost declining in your powers.

 

Then you love, but the love never becomes really hot, it never comes to the point where people evaporate; it remains lukewarm. And when you have not been able to love totally, you cannot love your children because you don't know how. When you have not been able to know the peaks of it, how can you teach your children? How can you help your children to have the peaks of it?

 

So down the ages man has been denied love so that he should remain weak.

 

Second: Keep man as ignorant and deluded as possible so that he can easily be deceived. And if you want to create a sort of idiocy -- which is a must for the priest and the politician and their conspiracy -- then the best thing is not to allow man to move into love freely. Without love a man's intelligence falls low. Have you not watched it? When you fall in love, suddenly all your capacities are at their peak, at their crescendo. Just a moment ago you were looking dull, and then you met your woman... and suddenly a great joy has erupted in your being: you are aflame. While people are in love, they perform at their maximum. When love disappears or when love is not there, they perform at their minimum.

 

The greatest, most intelligent people are the most sexual people. This has to be understood, because love energy is basically intelligence. If you cannot love, you are somehow closed, cold; you cannot flow. While in love one flows. While in love, one feels so confident that one can touch the stars. That's why a woman becomes a great inspiration, a man becomes a great inspiration. When a woman is loved, she becomes more beautiful IMMEDIATELY, instantly! Just a moment ago she was just an ordinary woman, and love has showered upon her -- she is bathed in a totally new energy, a new aura arises around her. She walks more gracefully -- a dance has come to her step. Her eyes have tremendous beauty now, her face glows: she is luminous. And the same happens to the man.

 

When people are in love they perform at the optimum. Don't allow love and they will remain at the minimum. When they remain at the minimum, they are stupid, they are ignorant, they don't bother to know. And when people are ignorant and stupid and deluded, they can be easily deceived. When people are sexually repressed, love-wise repressed, they start hankering for the other life. They think about heaven, paradise -- but they don't think to create the paradise here-now.

 

When you are in love, paradise is here-now. Then you don't bother, then who goes to the priest? Then who bothers that there should be a paradise? You are already there! You are no more interested. But when your love energy is repressed, you start thinking 'Here is nothing. Now is empty. Then there must be somewhere some goal...' You go to the priest and ask about heaven, and he paints beautiful pictures of heaven.

 

Sex has been repressed so that you can become interested in the other life. And when people are interested in the other life, naturally they are not interested in THIS life.

 

Tantra says: This life is the only life. The other life is hidden in THIS life. It is not against it, it is not away from it; it is IN it. GO into it. THIS IS IT! Go into it and you will find the other too. God is hidden in the world -- that is the Tantra message. A GREAT message, superb, incomparable: God is hidden in the world, God is hidden here-now. If you love, you will be able to feel it.

 

The third secret: Keep man as frightened as possible. And the sure way is not to allow him love, because love destroys fear... love casteth out fear'. When you are in love, you are not afraid. When you are in love, you can fight against the whole world. When you are in love, you feel infinitely capable of anything. But when you are not in love, you are afraid of small things. When you are not in love, you become more interested in security, in safety. When you are in love, you are more interested in adventure, in exploration.

 

People have not been allowed to love because that is the only way to make them afraid. And when they are afraid and trembling, they are always on their knees, bowing to the priest and bowing to the politician. It is a great conspiracy against humanity. It is a great conspiracy against YOU! Your politician and your priest are your enemies, but they pretend that they are public servants. They say 'We are here to serve you, to help you attain a better life. We are here to create a good life for you.' And they are the destroyers of life itself.

 

The fourth: Keep man as miserable as possible -- because a miserable man is confused, a miserable man has no self-worth, a miserable man is self-condemnatory, a miserable man feels that he must have done something wrong. A miserable man has no grounding: you can push him from here and there: he can be turned into driftwood very easily.

 

And a miserable man is always ready to be commanded, to be ordered, to be disciplined, because he knows 'On my own I am simply miserable. Maybe somebody else can discipline my life?' He is a ready victim.

 

And the fifth: Keep men as alienated from each other as possible, so that they cannot band together for some purpose of which the priest and the politician may not approve.

 

Keep people separate from each other. Don't allow them too much intimacy. When people are separate, lonely, alienated from each other, they cannot band together. And there are a thousand and one tricks to keep them away.

 

For example: if you are holding the hand of a man -- you are a man and you are holding the hand of a man, and walking down to road singing -- you will feel, guilty because people will start looking at you: Are you gay homosexual or something'? Two men are not allowed to be happy together. They are not allowed to hold hands, they are not allowed to hug each other. They are condemned as homosexuals. Fear arises.

 

If your friend comes and takes your hand in his hand, you look around. 'Is somebody looking or not?' And you are just in a hurry to drop the hand. You shake hands in such a hurry. Have you watched it? You just touch each other's hand and shake, and you are finished. You don't hold hands, you don't hug each other. You are afraid.

 

Do you remember your father hugging you ever? Do you remember your mother hugging you after you became sexually mature? Why not? Fear has been created. A young man and his mother hugging? Maybe some sex will arise between them, some idea. some fantasy. Fear has been created: the father and the son, the father and The daughter no: the brother and the sister no; the brother and the brother -- no!

 

People are kept in separate boxes with great walls around them. Everybody is classified, and there a thousand and one barriers. Yes, one day, after twenty-five years of all this training, you are allowed to make love to your wife. But now the training has gone too deep into you, and suddenly you don't know what to do. How to love? You have not learned the language.

 

It is as if a person has not been allowed to speak for twenty-five years. Just listen: for twenty-five years he has not been allowed to speak a single word and then suddenly you put him on a stage and tell him 'Give us a great lecture.' What will happen? He will fall there, then and there. He may faint, he may die... twenty-five years of silence, and now suddenly he is expected to deliver a great lecture. It is not possible.

 

This is what is happening: twenty-five years of anti-love, of fear, and then suddenly you are legally allowed -- a license is issued, and 'Now you can love this woman. This is your wife, you are her husband, and you are allowed to love.' But where are those twenty-five years of wrong training going to go'? They will be there.

 

Yes, you will 'love'... you will make a gesture. It is not going to be explosive, it is not going to be orgasmic: it will be very tiny. That's why you are frustrated after making love to a woman. Ninety-nine per cent of people are frustrated after making love, more frustrated than they have ever been before. And they feel 'What? There is nothing! It is not true!'

 

First the priest and the politician have managed that you should not be able to love, and then they come and they preach that there is nothing in love. And certainly their preaching looks right, their preaching looks exactly in tune with your experience. First they create the experience of futility, of frustration, then... their teaching. And both look logical together -- of one piece.

 

This is a great trick, the greatest that has ever been played upon man. These five things can be managed through a single thing, and that is the love-taboo.

 

It is possible to accomplish all these objectives by somehow preventing people from loving each other. And the taboo has been managed in such a scientific way. This taboo is a great piece of art -- great skill and great cunningness have gone into it. It is really a masterpiece. This taboo has to be understood.

 

First: it is indirect, it is hidden. It is not apparent, because whenever a taboo is too obvious, it will not work. The taboo has to be very hidden, so you don't know how it works. The taboo has to be so hidden that you cannot even imagine that thing against it is possible. The taboo has to go into the unconscious, not into the conscious. How to make it so subtle and so indirect?

 

There trick is: first go on teaching that love is great so people never think that the priests and the politicians are against love. Go on teaching that love is great, that love is the right thing, and then don't allow any situation where love can happen. Don't allow the opportunity. Don't give any opportunity, and go on teaching that food is great, that eating is a great joy, 'Eat as well as you can', but don't supply anything to eat. Keep people hungry and go on talking about love.

 

So all the priests go on talking about love. Love is praised as highly as anything just next to God and denied every possibility of its happening. Directly, they encourage it; indirectly, they cut its roots. This is the masterpiece.

 

No priests talk about how they have done the harm. It is as if you go on saying to a tree 'Be green, bloom, enjoy' and you go on cutting the roots so that the tree cannot be green. And when the tree is not green you can jump upon the tree and say 'Listen! You don't listen. You don't follow us. We all go on saying "Be green, bloom, enjoy, dance"'... and meanwhile you go on cutting the roots.

 

Love is denied so much. And love is the rarest thing in the world -- it should not be denied. If a man can love five persons, he should love five. If a man can love fifty, he should love fifty. If a man can love five hundred, he should love five hundred. Love is so rare that the more you can spread it the better.

 

But there are great tricks. You are forced into a narrow, very narrow, corner: you can love only your wife, you can love only your husband, you can love only this, you can love only that -- the conditions are too much. It is as if there were a law that you can breathe only when you are with your wife, you can breathe only when you are with your husband. Then breathing will become impossible. Then you will die. And you will not even be able to breathe while you are with your wife or with your husband.

 

You have to breathe twenty-four hours a day. The more you breathe while you are with your spouse...

 

Be loving.

 

Then there is a trick again: they talk about 'higher love', and they destroy the lower. And they say that the lower has to be denied: bodily love is bad, spiritual love is good. Have you ever seen any spirit without a body? Have you ever seen a house without a foundation? The lower is the foundation of the higher. The body is your abode, the spirit lives in the body. with the body. You are an embodied spirit and an ensouled body. You are together. The lower and the higher are not separate, they are one -- rung of the same ladder.

 

This is what Tantra wants to make clear: that the lower has not to be denied, the lower has to be transformed into the higher. The lower is good. If you are stuck with the lower the fault is with you, not with the lower. Nothing is wrong with the lower rung of a ladder. If you are stuck with it, YOU are stuck: it is something in you.

 

Move.

 

Sex is not wrong. YOU are wrong if you are stuck there. Move higher. The higher is not against the lower; the lower makes it possible for the higher to exist.

 

And these tricks have created many other problems. Each time you are in love, somehow you feel guilty; a guilt has arisen. When there is guilt, you cannot move totally into love -- the guilt prevents you, it keeps you holding on. Even while making love to your wife or your husband, there is guilt: you know this is sin, you know you are doing something wrong. 'Saints don't do it.' You are a sinner. So you cannot move totally even when you are allowed -- superficially -- to love your wife. The priest is hidden behind you in your guilt feeling; he is pulling you from there, pulling your strings.

 

When guilt arises, you start feeling that you are wrong; you lose self-worth, you lose self-respect.

 

And another problem arises: when there is guilt you start pretending. Mothers and fathers don't allow their children to know that they make love, they pretend. They pretend that love exists not. Their pretension will be known by the children sooner or later. When the children come to know about the pretension, they lose all trust. They feel betrayed, they feel cheated. And fathers and mothers say that their children don't respect them. You are the cause of it, how can they respect you? You have been deceiving them in every way, you have been dishonest, you have been mean. You were telling them not to fall in love -- 'Beware' and you were making love all the time. And the day will come, sooner or later, when they will realise that even their father, even their mother was not true with them -- so how they can respect you?

 

First, guilt creates pretension, then pretension creates alienation from people. Even the child, your own child, will not feel in tune with you. There is a barrier -- your pretension. And when you know that everybody is pretending... One day, you will come to know that you are just pretending and so are others. When everybody is pretending, how can you relate? When everybody is false, how can you relate? How can you be friendly when everywhere there is deception and deceit? You become very, very sore about reality, you become very bitter: you see it only as a devil's workshop.

 

And everybody has a false face, nobody is authentic. Everybody is carrying masks, nobody shows his original face. You feel guilty, you feel that you are pretending, and you know that everybody is pretending, everybody is feeling guilty, and everybody has become just like an ugly wound. Now it is very easy to make these people slaves -- to turn them into clerks, stationmasters, schoolmasters, collectors, deputy collectors, ministers, governors, presidents. Now it is very easy to distract them. You have distracted them from their roots. Sex is the root, hence the name MULADHAR. MULADHAR means the root energy.

 

I have heard...

 

It was her wedding night and the haughty Lady Jane was performing her marital duties for the first time.

 

'My Lord' she asked her bridegroom 'is this what the common people call love-making?'

 

'Yes, it is, my lady' replied Lord Reginald, and proceeded as before.

 

After a while Lady Jane exclaimed indignantly 'It is too good for the common people!'

 

The common people have not really been allowed love-making: 'It is too good for them.'

 

But the problem is that when you poison the whole common world, you are also poisoned. If you poison the air which the common people breathe, the air that the king breathes will also be poisoned; it cannot be separate -- it is all one. When the priest poisons the common people, finally he also is poisoned. When the politician poisons the common people's air, finally he also breathes the same air -- there is no other air.

 

A curate and a bishop were in opposite corners of a railway carriage on a long journey. As the bishop entered, the curate put away his copy of PLAYBOY, and started reading The CHURCH TIMES. The bishop ignored him and went on doing the Times crossword. Silence prevailed.

 

After a while the curate tried to make conversation. And when the bishop began to do a lot of head-scratching and 'tuttut-tutting' he tried again. 'Can I help you sir'?'

 

'Perhaps. I am only beaten by one word. What is it that has four letters, the last three are u-n-t, and the clue is: "essentially feminine"?'

 

'Why, sir' said the curate after a slight pause 'that would be "aunt".'

 

'Of course, of course!' said the bishop. 'I say, young man, can you lend me a rubber?'

 

When you repress things on the surface, they all go deep inside, into the unconscious. It is there. Sex has not been destroyed -- fortunately. It has not been destroyed, it has only been poisoned. It cannot be destroyed; it is life energy. It has become polluted, and it can be purified.

 

That is the process of Tantra: a great process of purification.

 

Your life problems can basically be reduced to your sex problem. You can go on solving your other problems but you will never be able to solve them because they are not true problems. And if you solve your sex problem, all problems will disappear because you have solved the basic one.

 

But you are so afraid even to look into it.

 

It is simple. If you can put aside your conditioning, it is very simple. It is as simple as this story.

 

A frustrated spinster was a pest to the police, she kept ringing up saying there was a man under her bed. She was finally sent to a mental hospital, but she still told the doctors there was a man under her bed. They gave her the latest drugs. and she suddenly declared that she was cured.

 

'You mean, Miss Rustifan, you can't see a man under The bed now?'

 

'No, I can't. I can see two.'

 

One doctor told the other that there was only really one sort of injection that would cure her complaint, which he called 'malignant virginity' -- why did they not set her up in her bedroom with Big Dan, the hospital carpenter?

 

Big Dan was fetched, told what her complaint was, and that he would be locked in with her for an hour. He said it would not take that long, and an anxious group gathered on the landing... they heard 'No, stop it, Dan. Mother would never forgive me!'

 

'Shut up yelling, it's got to be done some time. It should have been done years ago!'

 

'Have your way by force then, you brute!'

 

'It's only what your husband would have done, had you had one.'

 

The medics could not wait, they burst in.

 

'I have cured her' said the carpenter.

 

'He has cured me' said Miss Rustifan.

 

He had sawn the legs off the bed.

 

Sometimes the cure is very simple. And you go on doing a thousand and one things... And the carpenter did well... just cutting the legs off the bed, and it was finished. Now where could the man hide?

 

Sex is the root of almost all your problems. It has to be so because of thousands of years of poisoning. A great purification is needed.

 

Tantra can purify your sex energy. Listen to the Tantra message. Try to understand it. It is a great revolutionary message. It is against all priests and politicians. It is against all those poisoners who have killed all joy on the earth just so that man can be turned into, reduced into a slave.

 

Reclaim your freedom. Reclaim your freedom to love. Reclaim your freedom to be and then life is no longer a problem. It is a mystery, it is an ecstasy, it is a benediction.

 

-Osho, “The Tantra Vision, Vol 2, #4, Q6”